Bavaclaw

I don't if I'm in the right thread or not. But I put a 2" lift on my 98 jeep xj about 3 years ago and I started getting the famous Death wobble about a year ago. I recently decided to fix it. I knew the pitman arm tre was busted. So I bought a new tre for the drivers side, pitman arm and tre that goes to the drag link. I change them all and now my dw is even worse. I'm thinking maybe I didn't install them the right way? Or maybe somethings not tight enough? When I drive down the road the alignment is really off which is to be expected but it feels like the whole front axle is swaying back and forth. Any ideas?

Bobolink

You say you know that your alignment is all screwed up. That's one problem. Have you even checked the toe after replacing those TREs? If you have no idea whether the wheels are toed in or out, or by how much, then you need to get that straightened out first. Also check for play on the trackbar at the frame mount. Feel for play while someone else wiggles the steering wheel back and forth.

holycaveman

Have one or two people push the jeep on one side. Push driver to passenger like you are trying to slide the front end.

While they do this look at the front track bar where it's mounted on the axle. There should be a slight (very slight) movement in the lower track bar bushing (maybe 1/8") if the bolts or anything else moves this your problem.

Bavaclaw

Thanks guys. So it appears that the alignment is set to toe in. I also checked the track bar and there seems to some play on tre side. I'm going to change the track but new front tires and get it align and I will let you guys know how goes. Thanks!

Stabsthedrama

If you have any questions let us know - I've swapped out pretty much the entire steering system on 2 different XJ's now.

Also don't bother changing bushings, in my opinion for the price - just get a full track bar. For OEM Moog is a good choice.

The track bar is very easy UNLESS your castle nut gives you problems (the inner bolt free spinning with the castle nut) - fair warning, this could very well happen to you.

If this does happen, before putting a ton of effort into it uselessly, either take off the entire bracket assembly (4 bolts, for me it was surprisingly easy to take off, 2 from the air box area, 2 kind of inside the spring in the wheel well) - and this will allow you to take it off and get at it with a drill, hammer and chisel to split the nut off.

If you have an air chisel - even better - and you may not even have to take the bracket off to do it.

Only mentioning it because it's a common problem, and is otherwise most likely the only issue you would have changing anything out on the front end except for other rusted bolt/nut issues.

Also check for the holes (on each side of the track bar where the bolts go through) for being wallowed out. If they look good, don't worry about it - if they look like they've been wallowed out a bit, you'll have to weld hardened washers over the hole. Another common issue, so just check the state of the holes on both sides of the track bar (frame and bracket)

Some of this may not be relevant at all to your situation, just wanted to mention it in case anyone else sees this, since track bar (and alignment/tires) is step one in wobble related posts.

Bavaclaw

So after spending some days roughing it and backpacking through the Shenandoah mountains I decided to come back home and tackle the task of replacing my Jeeps™ track bar. Should be pretty easy right? I mean it's only 2 bolts or maybe 6 if I can't get the track bar out of the frame mount. Murphy's Law states that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Story of life.

Day 1
I rented a torque wrench to make sure everything was going to be torque to factory specs. I removed the front drivers side wheel and jacked the Jeep™ Up with a jack I bought from advance auto parts like a week ago and started pulling out the cotter pins. I turned around to get another wrench an the jack broke. So now with my rotor sitting on the asphalt and the rain starting to come down I grab another jack and started to lift the Jeep™ Back up. This time I put jack stands to hold the front end up and realized the wheel on the jack snapped on a brand new 2 ton jack. So def taking that back and getting my money back. So now with the front end jacked up I started torquing the castle nuts from the tre's I had replaced earlier and apparently the driver side was way off according to the torque specs and I'm guessing that was why I was getting a popping noise when I was making a turn.

Day 2
Getting the track bar was pretty easy once I hit it with some PB Blaster but just like Stabsthedrama said the track bar wouldn't come out from the frame mount. Unfortunately since I have spacers I had trouble removing the bolts from the frame. A quick trip to Napa to buy a 1/2 extension solved that problem. Once we pulled that out we just hammered it out of the frame and install everything and I added a new steering stabilizer & finally success!!
So now I can go like 60 without getting DW but there is still a little wobble with anything over 60 but it feels different and I'm hoping it's the tires this time. My Dad and I did our own alignment but unfortunately my tires just went about bald from the bad alignment so I don't know about the alignment but it pretty much straight just drifts a little to the left.
So I have 2 questions

#1
I can move my drag link bar up and down a little with my hand, Am I suppose to be able to this?

#2
After replacing everything my steering wheel was a little off so I turn the drag link sleeve to fix this not once but twice and it's still crooked. What am I'm doing wrong?

Thanks for the help guys it's much appreciated!!

Stabsthedrama

I can't comment too much other than to say that $60 for an alignment is always money well spent at a shop - just my .02$

I can check my drag link later and see if I can move it - but doesn't seem right to me.

Also I didn't even worry about torque specs on the castle nut to the frame - I supermanned the crap out of it, seems totally fine.

That's insane about the jack though.

If your tires are that bad, get new ones asap - then get an alignment. I know it's $, but hey, it is what it is. I had tires get totally jacked up from a bad alignment on my truck, it sucks...